The Reunion
by Caina
Summary: based on my own speculations about the new trilogy. No actual spoilers. Rey and Finn meet again for the first time in five years and so much has changed between them (and yet some things will never change).
1. The Reunion

**Reunion**

He felt her presence long before the tractor beam locked on their vessel. The crew wanted to fight but Finn didn't let them. It would be a massacre and for what? He was the one she was after.

So the moment the ship was docked in the bay inside the enormous belly of the Destroyer, he stepped out, waiting at the foot of the steps for her.

He didn't wait long.

She wore black, like her cousin before her had. But while Kylo Ren's uniform had been utilitarian, almost monkish, Rey's was a costume of silk and leather. Despite himself, his eyes travelled up from the lynth-skin boots, the form-fitting cloth that left so little to the imagination, to the wide fan-like cape, and finally to her pale blue eyes glinting and mocking on that familiar face.

(Thank the Force her eyes were blue for now. He had seen them yellow before. The memory sometimes slipped into his dreams, woke him up, shivering and sick.)

She smiled, as mocking as her gaze, and he felt blood rush to his face, feeling grateful that his skin would hide it from the others around him. It would not do for the famed Jedi Master Finn to show himself so vulnerable to the enemy.

"Master Finn," she said. Her voice was not mocking. It was… and despite himself, he felt the emotion grip him and hold it fast. Her voice was _her_ – Rey. Not Rey the dreaded Sith Lord. Or Rey the short-lived galactic hero. Or even Rey the scavenger. Just … Rey. The girl he had met on Jakku when he had been lost, who had been just as lost as he was, and somehow they had come together and found each other. The girl he had loved, whom had loved him, whom he had thought he would grow old together with.

Now they stood, barely a meter apart, and a wall of distance between them.

He could feel the power of the Dark Side swirling in her, chaotic, hungry, reaching for him.

(And try as Finn did to deny it to himself, yes, there was a part buried so deeply inside him that wanted to reach back).

"It's good to see you," she continued, and he almost believed her. Even her eyes, beneath that mocking gaze, was a faint glimmer of sincerity.

When he answered, his voice sounded heavy in his ears, "I wish I could say the same… Darth Fänger."

* * *

A/N: Possible spoilers for SW Ep 7. Based on my own speculations from the trailers so far.

I originally chose Fänger because Google told me that it was German for Scavenger - a fitting Sith name for Rey. It really means 'captor' or 'catcher', which I still feel will be close enough.


	2. Resolve

**Resolve.**

He found her, of course. The General was turning the whole Republic upside down and even the old Master was stumped.

But Finn would always find his Rey.

The moon outpost had a population of less than ten and they stood side by side at the abandoned docking station as he tried to talk sense into her.

"You have to turn yourself in," he was saying now, his voice as heavy and tired as he was.

"Why? So that she can kill me? My own blood and she wants me dead!" Rey's light eyes were large and frantic, haunted in her face.

"She won't-"

"She already tried. Stop pretending you didn't see."

"She was angry," he said, temper entering his voice for the first time. "You had gone too far. You murdered her oldest friend, her late husband's best friend, _your_ friend." And mine, he would have added, but he didn't need to.

In the dim light from the distant planet, he could see the color of shame in her cheeks.

"I never meant to kill him. He was my friend."

"He believed in you, trusted you," Finn pressed. "He was always your ally. He and the General fell apart because he didn't agree with the decisions they made about you."

"I know," Rey said softly.

His heart beat fast. Her eyes were glimmering, and for the first time he saw something yielding in them. Perhaps there was still hope after all. He had thought that invoking Han's name would drive her away but he apparently he had been wrong.

"Chewbacca would have wanted you to turn yourself in."

"No, he won't!" She snapped, and Finn's heart fell as in a blink of an eye, he saw her temper return. "That's why he died. He got in the way. He tried to stop me."

"From killing Snoke. Who was never yours to kill!"

"I murdered the monster who had destroyed the lives of billions! Who was threatening to revive the greatest evil that this world had ever seen! I was the hero but I'm the one being hunted now!"

"He was never yours to kill!" Finn shouted.

"Says who? Luke Skywalker?" Rey laughed, bitter, furious. "You hero-worshipped him, not me. He had lost all right to tell me what I could or could not do."

"He was right to warn about the Dark Side. About what would happen if you tapped into that anger. If you met Snoke in pain and fear."

" _I was in pain for you. I was afraid for you_." She shouted, and now her eyes were glimmering but the tears in them were anger. "Why can't you understand that?"

"Listen to me carefully, Rey. I would rather have died than watched you turn to the Dark Side. I surrendered to save my soul. Not to see you sacrifice yours!"

"Who cares how Snoke died as long as he did? What does it matter if I used the Dark Side? I can control it! I am controlling it!"

"No, you're not," he said, and even now he felt it swirling around her, a storm, a typhoon, and a part of him wanted to be sucked into it.

Finn took a deep breath, closed his eyes, blew out heavily.

When he opened his eyes to her passionate face, he was semi-calm. "Rey." His hands reached for her for the first time, wrapped around her upper arms and even now, after everything, he felt a thrill at the touch of her skin, felt his heart tighten at the way her eyes closed, and her aura flashed with the same fervor that he felt. "I saw your eyes that night."

Rey shook her head, eyes still closed but he pressed further, silencing her.

"It had taken over you. Luke, your f-" Her eyes opened then, flashed with warning and he changed his words, "The Jedi can help you if you let him. Just come back, please."

"I don't want to come back," she said, her gaze locked at him. "Unless…" She bit her lip – and he felt a kick, watching her teeth gnaw at her lip – and then she stepped right up to him, closing the space between them and sending his heart racing. Her hands came to his neck, held fast. "Come away with me. We'll be on the run, off the drig, and away from the comforts and luxuries of the Republic but," and her face was glowing now, suffused with hope, "we'll be together."

He could barely talk beyond the lump in his throat, could barely bring himself to crush the desperate hope in her face, and even his own traitorous heart which was jumping at her words, and tempting him to just say, "Yes, I'll run away with you Rey."

"We can't, Rey. We'll never survive on our own, not anymore, you know that."

"Please, Finn," and now her lips were hovering so near his own and he knew, he _knew_ , he should back away but he couldn't, " _please_ …" She pressed her lips to his.

They were as soft as – well, as he had dreamed about all this time. The kiss was short, tentative, and innocent really, nothing more than a press of flesh against flesh. She pulled back a little, staring at through lowered lashes, nervousness radiating from her.

"I'm sorry," she said, and she laughed softly, bitterly. "All this while I thought that-"

He let go off her arm to grab the back of her neck and he kissed her back, hard.

There was nothing tentative, innocent or short about this kiss. It was a desperate culmination of years of pent up emotions and the Force all but shouted in their ears as they threw everything they felt into it. He couldn't get enough of her, his hands moving from her hair, to her back, to curves that he had always wanted to feel; her own hands were restless wandering over his back, caressing the muscles of his shoulders and arms, then back to his face holding it tenderly between her palms even as she kissed him in every way but tender.

It was like they were trying to devour each other with their mouths.

"Run away with me," she gasped when they stopped to breathe. "Please, Finn. We're family, you said, all those years ago. I don't need my family, we don't need the Jedi. Please, Finn."

He wanted to speak but she grabbed him and kissed him again, and all words and thoughts fell out of his brain.

They went back to her place, the tiny room she had rented above the cantina, and sometime in that long night, he made up his mind. Rey was right. They were family. He was all she had and she – she was all he ever wanted. He could protect her from the Dark Side. They would keep each other safe.

They only needed each other.

* * *

A/N: Possible spoilers for SW Ep 7. Based on my own speculations from the trailers so far. This is in the same continuity as 'Reunion' and takes place 5 years before.


	3. The End of Excalibur

**The End of Excalibur**

 _3 Years Ago_

She had changed the focusing crystal. It glowed red in the darkness.

Otherwise, it was perfect. Luke had wanted her to build her lightsaber. Finn had crowed over her with his characteristic childish glee when he finished his own.

Later… much later… Snoke had demanded that she had to get her own to complete her training. It was a weapon for a Jedi. She needed a red blade to show the affiliation she now belonged to.

Rey laughed silently, remembering that discussion. Funny how the color of the blade hadn't stopped her cousin from coveting it.

She had ignored all of them. She didn't need a new lightsaber. Anakin Skywalker's weapon fitted the calluses of her palm like if she had been born clutching it in her hand. Even after she stepped off his son's path and onto his grandson's, she had kept her ancestor's weapon.

Then she fought Finn in the abandoned Temple in Coruscant. Slash for slash, feint for feint, it was almost like their old days practicing before Luke. Almost. Only this 'practice' was not done amid grins and quips, holding back just a little, despite Luke's complaints. No, neither held back this time. And there were no smiles or jokes, but fury in her gaze and determination in his own as they hit at each other again, and again, trying to cut the other down in a duel that lasted for hours due to how closely matched they were.

Closely, but not exactly.

Because Finn had honed his skill from years and years of daily, dedicated practice and he had duelled with her constantly and knew all her moves - but Rey was a child of the Force itself, a walker of the Sky and finally, finally, she cornered him at the precipice and knocked his blade out of his hand.

Finally, she pointed the tip of that blade at his chin, and readied herself to slice him from neck to groin. That was when she made her first and only mistake in that battle.

She looked into his eyes.

One last time, she had told herself. And for a short moment, the red haze of her vision had lifted, her hand had shaken – and he had called his own weapon into his hand, and sliced her grip.

The blow had damaged the weapon, irreparably and ended the fight.

* * *

A/N: still based on my own Star War ST fanon. No spoilers.


	4. Windows of the Soul

**Windows of the Soul**

When Rey was ready to meet Kylo Ren for the last time, they all told her the same thing:

 _Kill him quickly._

Leia had said it, her eyes dry and her jaw tight as she looked up at Rey's face. If in the days leading up to this fateful day, the General had felt grief at the thought of her son's impending death, she had kept it carefully to herself. Her lone instruction was spoken coldly, sternly and if not for the connection she had to Rey in the Force, Rey would never have known how much the General's spirit was crying out in pain.

 _Kill him quickly._

Her fa- Luke Skywalker had said it. And _his_ eyes didn't mask their grief, nor did his voice hide his sorrow. But he had said it all the same, an undercurrent of firmness in the same unhappy voice, as he stared hard at her with the same sorrowful eyes. Staring, watching really. But watching for what? For her resolve, or rather lack of it?

He had no idea who she was, did he? Rey thought and not for the first time.

 _Kill him quickly._

Poe might have said, if he was still alive. But Rey could almost hear his voice, his eyes shining with the glee of flight and fight, his voice merry and irrepressible, just the way it had sounded before Kylo Ren shot his fighter out of the sky.

 _Kill him quickly._

Finn told her that when they sat planning for that day. When he thought that it was a fight they would have taken on together. Not one she would have tricked and trapped him out of.

And now, Rey could still feel his fury through their Force bond as she looked down huddled, broken mess that was the once great Kylo Ren. She brandished the weapon in her hand, passed from Skywalker to Skywalker to her, as she prowled around the man she was about to destroy.

He glared at her, his eyes still their own colour – she had been told about the golden gaze of the Dark Side, as it peered through the souls of those it had completely consumed. But all the times she had met him, Kylo's eyes were dark brown.

Even in this, he had failed.

"Do it quickly," he said hoarsely.

Rey nodded grimly, adrenaline from the battle still coursing through her veins, even as the Force thrummed steadily all around her. She raised her weapon – and for a moment, time seemed to stand still.

Then she brought it down, aiming for his chest.

She remembered the way Finn had screamed when they had fought that first time in the snow, when Kylo had toyed with the younger, less experienced boy.

The imprint of Finn's scars seemed branded into her own calluses.

At the very last moment, the blade shifted and pierced through his shoulder.

Kylo Ren screamed.

It was not a stab to penetrate, or even amputate. But a stab to drill, to slowly, maliciously, drive through muscle and nerves, twisting the blade as she did so that she drew out pain, felt his aura rippling and shattering in the Force.

And Rey smiled.

She pulled out the blade before he could pass out, lifting it out of the way so she could kick the wound it made.

Kylo snarled, and he tried to grab her foot, trip her. She spun, and used the other foot to kick him in the face.

He rolled away, cradling his body in a foetal position. She wasn't sure but she could almost swear she heard him sob.

What mattered more though, was that she had clear view of his back. Slowly, lazily, almost gracefully, she twirled the blade so that it carved through an inch of skin, leaving a burning trail from nape to tail bone.

 _Now,_ she thought to herself, as the Force beat angrily, darkly around her, feeding off Kylo's screams, _you have matching scars._

She didn't know how he could still move, but he did, pushing himself to all fours as he crawled away from her.

She followed, slowly, taking her time.

When he stopped moving, she kicked him.

He sprawled to his belly, with a muffled groan.

She prowled around the collapsed heap until her boots were inches from his face.

She used the tip of her boot to flip him to his back.

He groaned again, and she felt the pain he was trying to suppress quaking through the Force.

"What are you waiting for?" he said.

Rey knelt before him, and leaned close so that she could see his eyes.

His eyes were dark, rimmed with red, and filled with agony.

She smiled.

"I want to enjoy this."

It took an hour to kill Kylo Ren. Rey finally lit the bonfire that consumed the mess of shattered, burnt, mangled flesh and bone that Kylo Ren used to be.

She felt stronger now. Satisfied in a way that she hadn't realized she hadn't been until she finally was.

As she stepped into her vessel, she caught her reflexion on the shiny plasti-chrome, and her heart seemed to stop, and she looked away.

Kill him quickly.

She remembered Luke Skywalker's words, and the watchful hard gaze with which he had said it.

She knew now what he was watching for.

He had been wrong, she told herself, as with shaky hands she manipulated her controls. BB-8 blooped to her and she spoke reassuringly to the droid.

"My eyes? We need to get your ocular sensors fixed. There's nothing wrong with my eyes."

As the engine revved for lift off, she closed her eyes for a brief moment – of prayer? of resignation? – and felt the golden heat burn against her lids.


End file.
